Re: forms with django and extjs 3.0.0

[Emily Rodgers]

2009/7/24 Russell Keith-Magee :
>
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 5:43 PM, Emily
> Rodgers wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am currently working on some web apps that use django for the back
>> end, and extjs for the front end (using JSON to pass data between the
>> two).
>>
>> I am getting to the point where I am going to have to start doing some
>> form integration. Has anyone done this lately (with the latest version
>> of extjs)? If so, how did you go about it? I have looked on the web,
>> but most of the extjs / modelform examples are using either an old
>> version of django or an old version of extjs, both of which have
>> undergone fairly backwards incompatible changes in recent revisions. I
>> just thought that I would ask here before spending lots of time trying
>> to figure it out from scratch.
>
> I can't speak for ExtJS, but Django hasn't had any backwards
> incompatible changes in almost a year - and the areas where you are
> delving here (i.e., view and forms handling) have been stable for much
> longer.
>
> So - you shouldn't have any problems (from a Django point of view)
> with any tutorial that is a year old.

Yep, but a lot of the examples / how-tos I have found are from 2007
before the forms changed in django. Admittedly, extjs has changed a
lot more than django (they pretty much scrapped the original design
and restructured the object heirarchy for extjs 2).

> I can't offer much advice than that, though. Firstly, I'm not that
> familar with ExtJS; secondly, there isn't that much to explain.
>  * You write a Django view.
>  * That view serves a HTML page.
>  * The HTML page contains some javascript.
>  * The javascript makes a call on another Django view.
>  * The second Django view serves JSON, or some other raw data format.
>  * The javascript running on the first page uses that data to modify
> in-situ the original page.
>
> And boom, you have an AJAX website. To be sure, there is some
> complexity in getting your Javascript working - but that complexity is
> almost 100% a function of your JS toolkit of choice. From Django's
> perspective, all you ever do is serve individual pages - either HTML
> for human consumption, or JSON/some other format for automated
> Javascript consumption.

Yep - as I said, I am fairly familiar with django, I have been using
it for over a year and have built 3 or 4 fairly big apps. I have
already been using django with extjs for displaying data (pretty much
how you describe above), however the thing that is slightly more
tricky is how best to handle forms.

Extjs does its own form handling (validation / widgets etc), and it is
tricky to know whether it is best to get django to do the translation
into extjs like data (maybe create an as_ext() method, analogous to
as_table() for rendering the form), or get extjs to understand the
django form data. I also need to consider what to do about validation
(it doesn't seem very dry to make extjs do the validation, but it can
do 'as you type' validation which is quite nice for the user
interface).  Has anyone had actually done this before recently? If so,
do they have any advice on which way to go? Or unforseen problems with
m2m fields etc?

On the extjs forums, the django examples are aimed at people who are
familiar with ext js but not django and don't really offer a lot of
help for the actual integration, so I was hoping that on the
django-users forum, there might be someone who would be able to offer
advice for someone familiar with django, but less so with extjs.

I will post a how-to somewhere when I have figured out what the best
way is (currently reading up / playing with extjs forms a bit more).

Em

--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Django users" group.
To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en
-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

Re: forms with django and extjs 3.0.0

[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 5:43 PM, Emily
Rodgers wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I am currently working on some web apps that use django for the back
> end, and extjs for the front end (using JSON to pass data between the
> two).
>
> I am getting to the point where I am going to have to start doing some
> form integration. Has anyone done this lately (with the latest version
> of extjs)? If so, how did you go about it? I have looked on the web,
> but most of the extjs / modelform examples are using either an old
> version of django or an old version of extjs, both of which have
> undergone fairly backwards incompatible changes in recent revisions. I
> just thought that I would ask here before spending lots of time trying
> to figure it out from scratch.

I can't speak for ExtJS, but Django hasn't had any backwards
incompatible changes in almost a year - and the areas where you are
delving here (i.e., view and forms handling) have been stable for much
longer.

So - you shouldn't have any problems (from a Django point of view)
with any tutorial that is a year old.

I can't offer much advice than that, though. Firstly, I'm not that
familar with ExtJS; secondly, there isn't that much to explain.
 * You write a Django view.
 * That view serves a HTML page.
 * The HTML page contains some javascript.
 * The javascript makes a call on another Django view.
 * The second Django view serves JSON, or some other raw data format.
 * The javascript running on the first page uses that data to modify
in-situ the original page.

And boom, you have an AJAX website. To be sure, there is some
complexity in getting your Javascript working - but that complexity is
almost 100% a function of your JS toolkit of choice. From Django's
perspective, all you ever do is serve individual pages - either HTML
for human consumption, or JSON/some other format for automated
Javascript consumption.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Django users" group.
To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en
-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

forms with django and extjs 3.0.0

[Emily Rodgers]

Hi all,

I am currently working on some web apps that use django for the back
end, and extjs for the front end (using JSON to pass data between the
two).

I am getting to the point where I am going to have to start doing some
form integration. Has anyone done this lately (with the latest version
of extjs)? If so, how did you go about it? I have looked on the web,
but most of the extjs / modelform examples are using either an old
version of django or an old version of extjs, both of which have
undergone fairly backwards incompatible changes in recent revisions. I
just thought that I would ask here before spending lots of time trying
to figure it out from scratch.

I have been using django for a year or so, but I am fairly new to
extjs, and the oo style of coding javascript (more like java / C#), so
I am playing catch up, and any help or advice would be gratefully
received.

Em
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Django users" group.
To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en
-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---